Disappointed in the theme song, considering I love both Jack White and Alicia Keys. Love Daniel Craig. The stunts were almost as great as Casino Royale. Wanted more sex scenes and heat. Liked James Bond’s Mother/Son relationship with M. The ending left me wanting more. This was reported as the shortest James Bond Movie.

Not as good as Casino Royale.

It’s a shame, really, as the excitement over a new Bond movie has been quite startling – CR was fab, and so many people I’ve spoken to have been so keen on seeing this. My local cinema has at least 20 showings today, and half a dozen were sold out by lunchtime! I can’t remember this sort of attitude towards the francise, not in my lifetime!

It’s still an enjoyable movie, but it does rather feel like a sequel – lots of references to the events in CR, and I suspect without having seen that film (and recently) the carry-over emotional content would have been missed.

There’s plenty of action to be had, certainly in the first half. Alas, it just never hit a peak for me, and the ending seemed to rather peter out a bit. The much-praised emotional content wasn’t as strong as I expected, and I found the creeping in of a vaguely Q-like nerd (geekery rather than gadgetry) and the obligatory Bond Girl a bit inane. Most of all, though, the baddie(s) just stayed a bit too much in the background, with the dasteredly plot failing to feel particarly threatening.

However, I did say ‘worth consuming’. The first half’s action lives up to expectations. Daniel Craig and Judi Dench are both brilliant, and I really liked the (non-disfigured!) baddie, Mathieu Amalric, who remains nicely understated. The mysterious group he’s part of (it’s in the trailer, before anyone complains!) is a nice start of a storyline, and I look forward to seeing it developed in later films.

So yeah, overall this felt more like a film-in-the-middle than a great standalone plot. Still entertaining, and if not living up to it’s predecessor, at least it’s left me looking forward to the next sequel.